No Dogs Allowed - OFLC Bans Eidos' Reservoir Dogs
Posted on Tuesday, June 27 @ 08:05:38 Eastern
Reservoir Dogs, an upcoming shooter game from Eidos/SCi based on the 1992 Quentin Tarantino movie of the same name, has been refused classification by Australia's Office of Film and Literature Classification (OFLC), effectively banning the title down under since games without classification cannot be sold legally in the country.
In a news release issued today, the OFLC explained its reasoning for not giving the game classification, stating that it "contains frequent depictions of violence that have a high impact. As such, the computer game cannot be accommodated at the MA 15+ classification and must be Refused Classification."
More specifically, the OFLC listed three instances of violence in the game that had a particularly high impact, one of which seems very much like "bullet-time." The three were described as follows:
- Players (participants in a bank heist) can literally blow the heads off hostages and police as well as execute hostages at point blank range with a gunshot to the head;
- Using a series of so-called signature torture moves, players can use different means to torture hostages and thereby cause police to lay down their weapons, such as repeated pistol whipping the side of the head with blood spray evident, burning the eyes of a hostage with a cigar until they scream and die, cutting the fingers off a hostage with blood bursts as the victim screams in pain;
- In lieu of taking a hostage the player can opt for a more violent scenario where a slow motion shootout occurs, accentuating the violence.
Atari, which holds the publishing rights to Reservoir Dogs in the region, has said that it has no plans to resubmit the game in edited form to the OFLC, so it appears that Australian gamers will never get their hands on the title—legally at least. Other games to have suffered a similar fate at the hands of the OFLC recently include Manhunt, GTA III, and Marc Ecko's Getting Up Contents Under Pressure.
Luckily for North American gamers, Reservoir Dogs will likely not face such problems when it's released here later this year for PS2, Xbox and PC. It will, of course, almost assuredly be rated "Mature" by the ESRB.
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